


Now and Then

by animad



Series: Curls [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 23:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animad/pseuds/animad
Summary: Dan and Phil are packing to move into their duplex and Dan makes a not so important decision.





	Now and Then

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if any of this has actually happened, obviously. But it's nice to think about.

Dan pushed open the door to his room and stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in his fully furnished bedroom for the last time.

It had taken years to build it up to this, acquiring various little nick-nacks over many years of sharing his life with Phil and all the adventures they had gone on. He was fond of so many of the things in this room, most of them holding little memories he cherished, and yet it still didn't look or feel quite how he wanted it to.

This was one of the reasons he was so excited to start over in a new place. He'd already spend hours trawling the internet looking for the perfect pieces that would fit the aesthetic he so badly wanted.

In each hand he held two large cardboard boxes. He walked into the room and placed them side by side on his bed. Then he grabbed a sharpie from his desk and scrawled on both of them ‘Dan's room’, then on one ‘keeping’ and on the other ‘not keeping’. He placed the lid back on the pen and dropped it into the ‘keeping’ box.

He looked around his room for the least daunting place to start. On realising there was no 'least daunting' part of his room, he decided on the side of the room he knew his webcam couldn't see. He was sure he wouldn't be finished by his next live show in a couple days, and he didn’t want to give the game away just yet.

It just so happened that this side of his room was also the messiest, with clothes and shoes strewn across the floor.

He knelt down beside a heap of clothes he knew he wanted to keep, so one by one he picked them up, folded them, and put them into a vacuum pack bag they'd bought to transport their clothes in. When a bag was full he flatten it, laid it in a suitcase he had set out and started on the next pile.

When all the clothes from his floor had been packed into bags and squished down into a suitcase, he stood up and opened the doors to his wardrobe.

This was going to be a little tougher; now he'd have to be ruthless and actually start throwing stuff out. He started left to right, taking each item off it’s hanger, before deciding its fate. He threw all the hangers into the ‘not keeping’ box; he’d already ordered a matching set of black hangers off amazon that he was already very excited to put into use.

Some things were easier to decide on than others. Most either went straight into a vacuum bag or a charity shop bag. However, some items took a little longer, he might have to put it on and look at himself in the mirror, or in extreme cases go and ask Phil's opinion who was next door working through his own wardrobe.

Once he’d sorted through all his clothes, he started on the stuff that had accumulated at the bottom of his wardrobe that he had dumped in there when he couldn’t be bothered to find a more suitable home for it.

There was stuff in there he hadn’t seen in years, some he’d forgotten about and some he thought he’d lost. He picked up the scarf he’d used when he’d played Beccy and immediately threw it in the ‘not keeping’ box.

The next item he picked up was the brain he'd made for his ‘Tour of my Brain’ video. He held it in front of him for a second and smiled, remembering how proud he was, still is, of that video. He'd nearly given up on it several times, when the ‘brain’ wasn't looking exactly how he’d pictured it, or when the ideas for a script just weren't coming to him. But he’d persevered and had been rewarded with one of his best videos.

Many hours, coffees, and a couple episodes of Steven Universe they'd watched with lunch, later, and his entire wardrobe was done. He stood back, admiring his handiwork. His wardrobe looked so empty now, only a few items kept back so he’d have something to wear in the meantime. It was a minimalism he quited liked but knew he could never keep up.

The boxes on his bed were pretty full now, so he taped then up and put them in the hallway outside their rooms. They were building a nice little collection of them now, but Dan knew this was only the beginning.

It was also getting late and he was getting hungry again, so he turned the light off in his room then walked into Phil’s to see how he was getting on.

However, as soon as he stepped through the doorway, he saw that Phil hadn’t been quite as productive as he had. It seemed like Phil’s entire collection of clothing had made it’s way on to the floor and into many piles that Dan could only hope to understand the meaning of. Phil’s actual wardrobe, however, was completely empty.

Dan stopped just inside the doorway, a look of horror on his face. He turned to Phil who was sat up against his headboard, reading a book.

“Phil, what on earth have you been doing?” Dan said, gesturing to the piles of clothing on the floor.

Phil looked up at Dan, then lifted his book so Dan could see the cover. He didn’t recognise it.

“I bought this ages ago,” Phil explained. “Then I lost it. But I just found it at the back of my wardrobe.” He looks at his clock, 10pm. “Well, a couple of hours ago I did.”

Dan sighed, noticing that Phil’s own boxes were still empty. “Well, I’m gonna order pizza. Do you want the usual?”

“Yes, please.” Phil replied with a smile, before returning back to his book.

Dan sighed again, and went to find his phone.

\-----

Phil was sat in the hallway, taping up the final boxes that had, indeed, piled up. He reached a box that he knew was going to the recycling. It contained several electrical items they were finally parting with that they had, for some reason, kept over the years even though they no longer worked. He scanned his eyes over the items, a final goodbye, he thought, but he wasn’t really concentrating, his mind elsewhere as it had been recently. Constantly thinking about and trying to come up with solutions to a million different problems on a million different subjects.

So he nearly missed it when, a few seconds later, his brain registered a long, black object resting at the top of the box. He lifted back up the flap he’d already halfway closed, and reached in and pulled out the object, causing the long cable wrapped around it's base to unravel slightly. He looked at it for a moment, slightly confused.

In the same moment, Dan walked out of his room and made to go around Phil, when he also paused, noticing what Phil had in his hand. He looked down at Phil, who looked back at him. Phil only gave a small smile, before placing the object back in the box and taping it up.

Dan moved on.

Phil was reminded not for the first, or last, time how proud he was of how far Dan had come.

-Last Time-

“Phil!” Dan yelled from his new bedroom, “Phil!”

“What?” Phil yelled back from his.

“Have you seen my straighteners? They aren't in any of my boxes.” Dan asked as he walked into Phil's room next door.

Dan’s hair was shorter now, but still long enough to form an unruly mass of curls on his head whenever he got even slightly damp. He had just gotten out of the shower, where he’d washed his hair, so it were pretty bad right now. They had a meeting to go to later, so the curls had to go, according to Dan.

For the last couple years, Dan had taken to leaving his hair curly if he knew for absolute certain they would not be going outside or seeing another human being the entire day, he wouldn’t even answer the door to the delivery man. Phil had been thrilled about this new behaviour and made to sure compliment Dan on his curls at every opportunity. The glares he would receive in return were even becoming less threatening.

However, today was not one of those days and Dan needed his straighteners.

“I haven’t seen them, sorry.” Phil replied. “Are you sure they aren’t in any of your boxes?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if they were, would I?” Dan snapped.

“Well, they’re probably just in another box, that’s all.” Phil told him, calmly, as he bent down to look through his own still-packed boxes.

Dan huffed and turned around and Phil heard him walk into the kitchen to look through the boxes there. They weren’t many of them and when Phil didn’t find them in any of his own and when Dan didn’t return he assumed he must have found them, so he grabbed his laptop, sat back down, and scrolled through social media for a bit.

About 20 minutes later, Phil heard Dan stomping down the hall towards him. Phil looked up to see Dan stomp into his room.

“Aren’t you even going to help me look?” Dan asked him, frustration evident in his voice.

“Sorry,” Phil replied, “I thought you’d found them.”

“Well, clearly not.”

“Are you sure you searched all the boxes?” Phil asked, closing his laptop and standing up.

“Yes. Twice”

Phil looked through his own boxes again then walked past Dan into his room to search through Dan’s.

“I’ve already looked through these, Phil,” Dan told him. “You won’t find them if I can’t.”

Phil searched through five more boxes before he reached the living room, Dan making pointed huffs behind him.

“It’s no good, I’ll just have to borrow yours again then buy some more.” Dan whined and huffed again.

Phil was searching through the second and final box for the living room when he suddenly stopped, still bent over the box, arms stretched to the bottom. Slowly, he stood up, a smaller battered cardboard box in his hand.

Dan’s eyes went wide. “How did you-” he started. “I searched that one, I swear!”

Phil smiled and made to go back to his room, pausing briefly to push the box into Dan’s hands, who still looked somewhat in awed annoyance. “Your welcome.” He whispered into Dan’s ear.

“Thanks.” Dan mumbled back.

-This Time Again-

Dan had just finished his last liveshow on his computer before that, too, was packed up. He spun around in his chair and scanned his eyes across the room. The half of it his webcam could see was one of the last parts of the house to be packed up completely. The other half of his room was sat in boxes.

It was surprisingly easy, an almost automatic decision when Dan found his straighteners pushed to the back of one of the draws in his desk. He found himself picking them up and dropping them into a box destined for a new home at the recycling site before realising what he was doing. He stopped himself, hand hovering in midair. A thought occurred to him; he actually hadn’t used them in several months.

He felt this should be a more momentous decision, after all they had been a large part of his brand, the cause of many arguments between him and Phil, and something, not so long ago, he thought he could never live without. Instead, he held his hand out further and dropped them into the box.

He took another moment, trying to appreciate the significance of this act, but found he couldn’t. He could always use Phil’s, after all, or more buy more, if he changed his mind. But for now, he didn’t really care, because he was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are welcome :)  
>  
> 
> [tumblr post](http://yourfriendlyblogstalker.tumblr.com/post/171209189376/curls-now-and-then)


End file.
